


Ten Things I Hate About You (Plus One to Make It Prime)

by apple_pi



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-15
Updated: 2013-03-15
Packaged: 2017-12-05 08:22:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,552
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/720924
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apple_pi/pseuds/apple_pi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rodney's been hanging around the American military long enough to know air force jocks get away with murder, hair-wise, but even the air force has to have problems with Sheppard.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ten Things I Hate About You (Plus One to Make It Prime)

**Author's Note:**

> Sheppard's state of origin was later revealed to be, in fact, south of the Mason-Dixon Line, but when I wrote this there some fanon which stated that was from California. (Plus the pilot episode which implied he'd gone to San Francisco to make his decision about whether or not to go through the stargate.) So forgive that error, please. :-)

1\. Rodney hates Sheppard's awful flyboy drawl. Why would he talk like that, he's from _California_ or something, Californians don't (shouldn't) sound like they are sipping mint juleps on the rocking chair on the screened-in porch. Rodney's willing to overlook the accent the first few times (although Southern accents make people sound stupid - they're too slow, Southerners take forever to say anything and they don't even have a decent reason like that little guy from Latvia or Czech or Romania or whatever, at least English isn't his first language, he has an EXCUSE), but after Rodney's hacked most people's private files (the people he has to work with, anyway, the brass), he knows Sheppard isn't even _from_ Texas or Alabama or something. Rodney hates Sheppard's lazy voice, especially when he knows it's fake.

2\. Sheppard has the worst hair Rodney has ever seen. Rodney's been hanging around the American military long enough to know air force jocks get away with murder, hair-wise, but even the air force has to have problems with Sheppard. How he ever made Major is a mystery, since his unit photos all the way back show the same half-ruffled feathers sticking straight up, whether Sheppard's face below the hair is young and goofy (his ears stuck out terribly when he was 22, his neck too thin and adam's apple prominent, he looked ridiculous) or older and gaunt (he had to have a picture taken again just before McMurdo, before time and effort had smoothed away (hidden) the hollows under his cheekbones and the sunken eyes from Afghanistan - from all the time there or just those last bad days before the court martial, before Sheppard was sent to Antarctica, Rodney doesn't know, doesn't - at all, in the middle of the night - think about, or care about).

3\. Rodney hates the fact that Sheppard finds him amusing. Rodney is not AMUSING, he is RIGHT, 99-point-9-to-the-eleventh-power-9 percent of the time, and when they are running away from the natives who did, in fact, want to kill and eat them (he TOLD Sheppard so, eight times before dinner and three times during, right up to the point where he found a _finger_ in his _soup_ , and he'll tell him again in a minute, when he gets his breath back from the running and they've collapsed on the other side of the damn gate), Rodney hates that Sheppard is laughing, nearly incoherent with it. Later when they are, indeed, safe in the control room, lying on the floor (except for Teyla, who looks like maybe she just trotted down the stairs and is about that out of breath), Rodney is already attempting to gasp out his litany of complaint and vindication, even though he can't breathe for the spit choking him and his legs are shaking from running so long and so hard. Sheppard rolls over on the cool tile and tosses something limp and pink and disgusting toward Rodney, something which goes _splat_ on the floor. It's an ear. "I'm sorry, what did you want to say?" Sheppard pants, grinning. "I'm all ears." Rodney really hates him.

4\. Rodney hates Sheppard's instant, all-encompassing love affair with the puddlejumpers. They light up for him (they do for Rodney, too, but it's not the same), they purr and warble and hum for John, they practically sing top forty love songs and paeans to his fabulous powers of mechanical wooing. Rodney has seen John murmur sweet nothings to the jumpers, coo to them, whisper low-pitched promises and vows. John likes to touch the damn things everywhere, it's positively obscene that he can't be within three feet of one without resting a hand on smooth-sheeted metal, running his fingers across curves of plasticene and crystal and leather (or whatever the seats are covered with). John's palms leave warm places on the jumpers when he takes them away, and Rodney knows because he puts his hands over the soft, foggy prints of John's hands, just to see how they fit. His hands are larger than John's, but just barely.

5\. Rodney hates John's flat affect (related to the lazy drawl? Rodney can't decide), but even more than that he hates it when John's voice goes sharp and hard and loud. He winces away from him, can't meet his eyes and can't look away. Rodney knows he looks stupid, then, and if there's one thing he can't stomach it is looking stupid, but still: when John is loud, harsh, clipped, Rodney can't help but stare with his eyes too wide and his mouth half-open. John hardly ever shouts, that's the thing, and when he does it means things are really really bad. It means someone is dead (someone they both know, maybe like) or dying (maybe Rodney, he hates that the _most_ , maybe John, and that's second-worst) and the shit has hit the fan, been finely ground and atomized, and is now evenly dispersed over pretty much everything and everyone Rodney has grown to care about since they came to the Pegasus Galaxy.

6\. Rodney hates that John looks hot no matter how filthy, sweaty, dirty, messy and broken he is.

7\. Rodney hates that John can read him so easily. Okay, everyone can read Rodney easily, but he _can_ keep a secret, certain poker-playing card-sharps' assumptions notwithstanding. Rodney has worked on too many high-security projects, in too many secret labs, underground bunkers, frozen fucking _wastelands_ , to give everything away so cheaply. And yet - he does, it seems, because John always knows just which buttons to push, just how far to take a joke and when to back down, when to drop the laconic thing and say something, when to leave him alone, when to touch Rodney's shoulder or pull him up off the floor or sit down beside him. When to walk away and when to come closer and closer and closer, when to stomp right into his quarters and back him into the wall and put his face right into Rodney's, when to grab his arms, when to kiss him harsh and scorching and fucking _impossible_ : impossibly good, impossibly frightening, impossibly everything.

8\. Rodney hates that John's dick is longer than his. (He likes, though, that he can still get it all in, in his mouth, all the way, the head bumping the back of his throat, soft palate raised and breath huffing through his nose as he sucks and swallows. John likes that, too.)

9\. Rodney hates how much it hurts when nothing happens for two weeks after that one night. He hates himself, because he knows that slightly overweight science geeks never ever get hot air force pilots with super-genes. He hates John because Rodney _deserves_ him, deserves John's lazy (sexy, slow) drawl, his messy, irritating (soft, fine) hair, deserves John's awful sense of humor (and the way he laughed at Rodney when it took him under two minutes to come, the first time, and then laughed again when Rodney made _him_ wait for it the second time, writhed under Rodney and cursed and threatened him and then laughed at himself, at Rodney, at the ridiculousness of lying on Rodney's bed with his ass in the air and Rodney's tongue sliding down the cleft). Rodney deserves at least some of John's whispered promises, lies; the warmth of his palms and the fine lines of heat John drew on his skin, fingertips sliding over Rodney's belly and thighs and back. Rodney deserves better than John, and he deserves John, and he hates John a lot.

10\. Rodney hates how easily he gives in two weeks later. He hates John even as he opens the door to his quarters and locks it behind himself, as he pushes John, unresisting, onto his back on the bed and kisses and sucks at the set, terrible line of his mouth until John gives in (Rodney hates that John gives in) and opens to him, until John shudders under him with silent grief for all the ones they lost, not just that day but every damn day since they came through the damn gate, it sometimes seems. Rodney fumbles John's pants open and kisses him the whole time he strokes him, and doesn't - for once - talk at all. Rodney hates that he can sprawl over John and make him forget it, or forgive it, or release it - let it go - _something_ \- but _Rodney_ remembers the whole time: as John lets out a harsh, quiet sob and comes over his hand, Rodney remembers why John's mouth looked like that, tasted like that. Rodney hates John because John didn't really forget or forgive or release or let go, and they both know it. He hates John because John rolls him over and undresses him, and strips himself the rest of the way, too, and lowers himself onto Rodney and rides him slowly, leaning down to kiss Rodney's wet, sticky eyelashes and wet, sad-feeling mouth. John kisses him and grips his hand and his shoulder and rides him until Rodney comes with a sound that is broken, just like John. 

Plus one:

11\. Rodney really hates John. (He's glad, though - and that's the wrong word, Rodney acknowledges somewhere private - and certain as well that it won't be two weeks before they collide again. He deserves John, maybe even more than he hates him.)


End file.
